To Drown Is To Love
by tasukichiriko
Summary: Draco/Harry slash: When night falls, things get a bit confused, but Harry and Draco begin to figure things out come morning.


Title: To Drown Is To Love  
Author: Kimmie (tasukichiriko@hotmail.com).  
Archive: fanfiction.net (tasukichiriko).  
Category: Vignette, POV.  
Pairings: Harry+Draco.  
Disclaimer: The characters in this story are mine only in spirit and voice. Their "likenesses", names, categorizing features, favourite activities (other than the randiness I like to make them engage in), studies, teachers, friends, acquaintances, etc., etc., belong to J.K. Rowling and not me.  
Rating: PG-13.  
Warnings: This is a bit of a dark!fic, folks.  
Spoilers: Vague spoilers for early "Chamber of Secrets", I suppose.  
Notes: Seri's awesome "Feast of Apples" somehow inspired this (perhaps a sort of "take back the night" deal?). She also inspired me to finish it, even if only because I was talking to her about it and then got the idea for how to continue. So, yes. Here it is. It is Harry POV. Enjoy!  
STYLE NOTE: ALL SHIFTS IN POV AND TENSE ARE DELIBERATELY USED TO ILLUSTRATE HARRY'S MINDSET & PERCEPTIONS. (Thanks to Serious_Black for coming up with this note.)  
----------------------------------------------------------------------  
There is nothing more beautiful than you; except you in the moonlight; trapped beneath the water; with your lips stained with my name; your voice lost in bubbles that cannot help but abandon you like everything else; and you cry, but who can find tears when they bleed right into their environment? Harder to discern than a pin in a stack of needles, and equally as dangerous to try to find.  
  
But, I am Too Good, and still not used to getting my own way, so I pull back my hand and let you surface and you sob and your chest heaves and the air is cold around you and your hair is dripping wet and in your face and your lips are blue and you are still lovely, but not quite so lovely as before.  
  
"Potter... Why the bloody fuck did you do that?" He is raging, but his teeth are chattering. Somehow, the effect is not spoiled. He is still of the same weave that caught upon me at first, only now he is real. He is not some spirit or apparition or hallucination because he can be spoiled, and that truth that lies in his existence is his beauty. But something seems off.  
  
"Sorry, Malfoy. Just wanted to make sure you weren't a fish. All that time spent kissing up to Snape presents a certain, well... image." These words are mine, but they are not my words, as well. The tears on the other boy's face become somewhat discernable, but only because they forge paths through the water droplets which cling to his face.  
  
I love how real you are right now. I love the way you make me feel. But as for loving you? I think perhaps that would be too cruel.  
  
I have wandered here on my way back from visiting the Forbidden Forest and the wild car which lives within, abandoned since my second year. Anglia and I have become friends, though of a sort that I could wish to understand, but choose not to make such a wish.  
  
The surface of the lake at Hogwarts is usually undisturbed so long as the giant squid is asleep. This evening, ripples cascaded across the water from one side of the lake. When I noticed, I approached the source of the commotion. There Draco Malfoy sat, his back to me. He was looking at himself in the mirror of the lake and then throwing stones at his reflection. Arrogant, angry bastard. My hands were out in front of me before I could bother to try to hold back.  
  
I had only intended to push you, Draco. Because to see you in wet robes is a childish fantasy that has outlasted anyone and everyone's fascination with me. Yet, you turned just as my outstretched fingers were about to graze your shoulders. So, my fingers caught about your neck instead. And you slid on the slippery rocks that surround Hogwarts' lake and then you were in the water, and my hands were as well. The moonlight was bright enough that I could see the bubbles trailing out of your mouth and breaking at the water's surface, and I could just make out the way my hands looked on your neck and how your hands looked locked around my wrists trying to pull me away.  
  
And the bubbles stopped suddenly, and your eyes grew painfully wide, and you dug out flesh from my wrists with your fingernails, and I let go.  
  
He spoke again. "That wasn't funny, Potter. You could have killed me." His chest is still heaving, and his face is still dripping, though his robes are pouring like a pitcher with every erratic movement he makes.  
  
I smile at him. "You're right. I could have."  
  
His nostrils flare and his lips work at words that do not actually pass through his lips. Finally, a set does. "You're a monster. I always knew you were."  
  
I take a step closer. "Did you always want to be friends with the monsters, Malfoy?"  
  
He trembles, and shivers, and there isn't much difference between the two except that his teeth chatter with the shivers.  
  
I step closer and he looks down and to his side, probably glancing behind himself. He moved out of the water, but only got so far as the edge of the slippery rocks that were his downfall before. He doesn't dare take a step backward, and wouldn't dare taking a step forward.  
  
"Did you sleep with a nightlight, Draco? I'll bet you did. I'll bet your mum enchanted a Muggle nightlight and kept it around for you because you were scared, and when your father found out, he was furious and broke the nightlight and you stayed up for hours on end for weeks trying to fix it with your mother's wand, but you couldn't. And that's why you do so well in school. And you pretend to hate Muggles so much because you sort of do. After all, they make things which break. And they couldn't fix what got broken inside of you having to be there, in the darkness, not knowing what was lurking in the corners. It must have been hell."  
  
Draco licked his lips and tried to catch his breath, though he was closer to hyperventilation than anything else. "How do you know so much, Potter? One of those silly dreams you've had in Divination? They tell you all about Voldemort. Why shouldn't they tell you about me?"  
  
I smiled at him, my grin sitting as crooked on my face as my glasses always did. "No, Malfoy. I guessed. You always did seem a bit wary of the dark, and I wondered why. Me? I have no right to be afraid of the dark. I've spent enough years in it that I'm used to it. I'm used to small spaces, too. And spiders. And hand-me-downs. And death." I shrug. "While I'm still not too keen on that last one, the others are things I've lived with all of my life without too much fuss. Because, where I come from, if you fuss, you get hurt. And that's all there is to it."  
  
Your breath is coming in great hiccoughs now. Are you afraid of what I'll do to you if I get close enough to have my hands around your neck again? Will I try again? I might. I can't be sure of what I'll do around you, Malfoy. Certains portions of my sanity cease to exist in your presence.  
  
As I inch closer and closer as we talk in words and blocks of silence pierced by your shallow breaths, I can see the contemplation in your eyes. Do you throw yourself into the water, or take your chances with me? I'll bet on the second one. I've never seen you try to go swimming before. You've probably never learned. But this might make you.  
  
I step closer and your tears seem to flow faster and faster still, and it's almost funny. I chuckle minutely at the situation and you look horrified. "Oh!" But it is amusing in some small way. "Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not your daddy." My hand has found its way to your cheek. Cupping that cheek gently, I can feel the heat difference between those surfaces which are tear-stained, and those that are merely wet. You are trembling. I think I like that.  
  
Your hands are clenched, and seem to be tempted toward me, though whether to push me away, or push merely my hand, or whether to pull me closer or some such tripe is still unknown. I find myself curious, and I test my boundaries just a bit.  
  
He goes solid like tree trunks when the pad of my thumb touches down in the center of his bottom lip. He is honestly afraid. Am I so horrid that even my yearmates are afraid of me? Then again, I am regularly associated with Voldemort.  
  
It seems as though we are stark opposites of what we were when we first met, meaning that I am you and you are me. Perhaps it would not be such a bad thing to kill you, after all.  
  
My lips are touched to my thumb, and my thumb slides away and your cold, wet lips are connected with mine, and there is a certain light to be found there that I can't claim to have known before. There is a spark that lights when I kiss you, and I feel suddenly myself again. Before I know it, you've shoved me away and taken off running. The tears still stream down your face, but you've found the weakness that allowed you to take back what I'd stolen from you in that first moment of watching.  
  
You've shoved me off enough that I am on my backside on the damp grass by the lake. There are no ripples on the water, but there are ripples in the air, like the residue of some magic gone horribly wrong. Somehow, I am glad.  
  
My mind feels tampered with, as though it had been injected with someone else's thoughts temporarily, or perhaps as though someone else organized my thoughts to their own liking. Everything feels misplaced, and it is unsettling. Or, rather, it feels as though all of my thoughts are where they should be, but the previous cabinets of thought have been rebuilt and nothing fits quite right anymore. But there is nothing that I can do, much like there never is.  
  
You were me, and I was you, and it was so horrible. And I kissed you. Or did you kiss me? Or does it matter? That light inside me fades, like the filament in a lightbulb when exposed to the air. It burns so bright, and then it's gone. Where, exactly, do I buy a replacement for this? Somehow, I don't think you can get this even by owl order.  
  
The moonlight that allowed me to see you, even cloaked by the dark water of the lake, is hidden behind clouds now. I can barely see the distinction between the water and the slippery surrounding rocks. This is night, as true as I can see it, and I'm sitting on my arse on the wet grass, and I'm not sure of a damn thing except that my arse is wet along with the grass. It isn't a pleasant evening by far, particularly by the lake. Perhaps a walk in the corridors, even chancing an encounter with Snape or Filch or Mrs. Norris, would help the eve along into something closing in on right.  
  
I found my way back to the stone walls of the castle that was Hogwarts. And there you stood. Draco Malfoy, like a rag doll, drooping like flowers that have wilted in the hot sun. You shiver, too. There is no heat in your wilting.  
  
There are no words to say to you, either. How can I apologize? I was you. I was the victim. Though my lips and hands have wronged you, so your thoughts have wronged me.  
  
And they continue to do so. They must, for I am unsure as to whether or not I have enjoyed myself this evening. If I have, then those moments might have stayed with you. Yet, the rag-doll can't enjoy the play, but merely dance along guided by someone else's fingers. But, something tells me that we created whatever magic this was that made you me and made me you. Was it a secret longing to try life from the other side that happened to coincide? Were we satisfied?  
  
The answers rings out on my lips. "No."  
  
A young boy's fingers tilt the head of his rag doll up to look at me. "What are you doing here, Potter? Back for more of whatever that was? Care for me to kiss you or you to kiss me now that you know I'm a little homo boy?"  
  
I stand there because I do not know what to say. You find your way into the rag doll and pull yourself to your feet.  
  
"Well, Potter?"  
  
You're walking toward me and I shake my head slightly. You catch the movement and narrow your eyes and purse your lips.  
  
I am beneath you, sprawled again on the wet grass, before I realize that you have kissed me. And you are up and gone again before I realize that, yes, I did like it. I like kissing you, but you do not like kissing you. Is that the way it goes, Malfoy? Could you tell me, then, the opinion that you and I have on kissing me?  
  
It's all a parasol of confusion, twirled about my head as though I am a debutante in the sun. Is this supposed to make sense? Or is the confusion the desired result?  
  
You were me, and I was you. So I should know how you felt, but I can't. Because I wasn't me at the time. You were.  
  
And you've started to run away again, and I'm not about to let you go this time. "Malfoy!"  
  
You turn, but only because my hand is wrapped around your wrist, and there's a flush staining your cheeks like they've been freshly slapped. "What do you want, Potter? I can't give you an explanation, and it's obvious that you've got no more clue about what happened down by the lake than I have. It was like... I drowned myself and I only let go because you were there and you were drowning with me. Oh, fuck it! I hate you, Potter!" And you turn to really face me and kiss me again and your lips are still cool, though they have dried, and your hair is still drenched, and your robe as well, when my arms come up to twist around you. I am cooling off, and you are heating up, and we are becoming what we were, though not quite to the same degree. I take a bit of you, and you take a bit of me, and we meld.  
  
Before I know it, it is morning, and we are just-past-asleep, still entwined, in a hedge garden near the side entrance of the school that is nearest the lake. The morning dew has settled on the grass and we shiver, though the sun is bright. But, everything is okay. I think.  
  
This promises to provide an endless amount of confusion, particularly provided that I drown in you and you drown in me. Yet, as I wear this veil over my eyes, and try to find the truth with my fingertips, I find, instead, your lips. And though you shiver with the morning cold, we have the sunshine now. In the darkness, you gave me your lips. In this sunlight, I'll give you mine.  
  
To drown in one another is to be in something that I have heard called love. I have also heard it called hate. Most accurately, it may be called passion. But regardless of what name you assign to this feeling, it remains that the feeling is there. I put on my cloak of passion to warm me from the confusion that closes in like cold whenever you're around.  
  
Drowning in your warmth is perhaps the best place to be, if only because I don't think I'll ever quite realize what's happening to me.  
----------------------------------------------------------------------  
End Transmission. ^_~ 


End file.
